RESEARCH
PAPERS
Michael Buckland:
VOCABULARY AS A CENTRAL CONCEPT IN LIBRARY AND
INFORMATION SCIENCE
Bryce Allen: DIGITAL LIBRARIES AND THE END OF
TRADITIONAL INFORMATION SYSTEMS
Christine L. Borgman: WHAT ARE DIGITAL LIBRARIES, WHO IS
BUIDLING THEM AND WHY?
Rafael Capurro:
ETHICAL ASPECTS OF DIGITAL LIBRARIES
Amanda Spink, Colleen
Cool: DEVELOPING DIGITAL LIBRARIES
EDUCATION: INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES ON THEORY
AND PRACTICE
Paul Sturges, Jessica
Sambrook: HUMANITIES SCHOLARSHIP, THE
RESEARCH LIBRARY AND THE DIGITAL LIBRARY
Louise T. Su,
Hsin-Liang Chen: USER
EVALUATION OF WEN SEACH ENGINES AS PROTOTYPE
DIGITAL LIBRARIES RETRIEVAL TOOLS
Wanda V. Dole, Jitka M.
Hurych: NEW
MEASUREMENTS FOR THE NEX MILLENIUM: EVALUATIONG
LIBRARIES IN THE ELECTRONIC AGE
Jane Reid: A NEW TASK ORIENTED PARADIGM FOR
INFORMATION RETRIEVAL: IMPLICATIONS FOR
EVALUATION OF INFORMATION RETRIEVAL SYSTEMS
Christine Dugdale: MANAGING ELECTRONIC RESERVES: NEW
OPPORTUNITIES AND NEW ROLES FOR LIBRARIANS?
Robert M. Hayes:
THE ECONOMICS OF DIGITAL LIBRARIES
Diane H. Sonnenwald et
al: COLLABORATION SERVICES IN A
PARTICIPATORY DIGITAL LIBRARY: AN EMERGING DESIGN
Philip Doty, Sanda
Erdelez: A
DIGITAL LIBRARY OF LEGAL CASE DOCUMENTS: THE
DISTRICT ELECTRONIC CASE LIBRARY (DECaL)
Bryn Lewis: AUTOMATING ELECTRONIC DOCUMENT
ORGANISATION
Zheng Wang, Linda L.
Hill, Terence R. Smith: ALEXANDRIA DIGITAL LIBRARY METADATA
CREATOR BASED ON EXTENSIBLE MARKUP LANGUAGE
Preben Hansen: USER INTERFACE DESIGN FOR IR
INTERACTION: A TASK-ORIENTED APPROACH
Nils Pharo: WEB INFORMATION SEACH STRATEGIES: A
MODEL FOR CLASSIFYNG WEB INTERACTION?
Ian Ruthven, Mounia
Lalmas: SELECTIVE
RELEVANCE FEEDBACK USING TERM CHARACTERISTICS
Kai Korpimies, Esko
Ukkonen: TERM
FREQUENCY-BASED IDENTIFICATION OF FAQ-ARTICLES
Per Ahlgren: ON A COGNITIVE SEARCH STRATEGY
Denis McQuail: DIGITALIZATION AND THE FUTURE OF
COMMUNICATION
Susanne Ornager: IMAGE ARCHIVES IN NEWSPAPER EDITORIAL
OFFICES: A SERVICE ACTIVITY
Jerome Aumente: LIBRARIES,
JOURNALISM AND THE MASS MEDIA IN THE DIGITAL AGE
OF THE INTERNET: CHALLENGES AND TRANSFORMATIONS
SHORT PAPERS
William J. Adams,
Bernard J. Jansen, Todd Smith: PLANNING,
BUILDING, AND USING A DISTRIBUTED DIGITAL LIBRARY
Jasna Dravec-Braun: IS IT POSSIBLE
TO BUILD UP ONLINE UNION CATALOGUE WITHOUT ONLINE
LIBRARY SYSTEM? EXAMPLE OF THE SUBSYSTEM’S
“PRIRODOSLOVLJE” UNION CATALOGUE
Emmanouel Garoufallou: THE IMPACT OF
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ON GREEK ACADEMIC
LIBRARIES AND LIBRARIANS : PRELIMINARY RESULTS
Marianne Hummelshoj,
Nanna Skovrup: INTERNET REFERENCE
SERVICES IN THE DIGITALIZED PUBLIC LIBRARY
Damir Kalpic, Jasenka
Anzil, Hrvoje Zokovic: FROM THE
TRADITIONAL TO A DIGITAL ACADEMIC LIBRARY
Maria Kocojowa, Wanda
Pindlowa: THE NEED OF A DIGITAL
LIBRARY FOR LIS RESEARCH IN POLAND
Wouter Mettrop, Paul
Nieuwenhujsen: SOME EMPIRICAL RESEARCH
ON THE PERFORMANCE OF INTERNET SEARCH ENGINES
Michael Middleton: METAINFORMATION
INCORPORATION IN LIBRARY DIGITISATION PROJCTS
Trine Schreiber,
Camilla Moring: DANISH RESEARCH LIBRARIES
IN A NETWORKED LEARNING ENVIRONMENT
Jadranka Stojanovski,
Aida Slavic: ELECTRONIC BIBLIOGRAPHY -
ITS RELIABILITY AND ITS IMPACT ON THE CONCEPT OF
BIBLIOGRAPHY IN GENERAL
Yin Leng Theng: FRAMEWORK FOR AN
APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT MODEL TO BUILD
USER-CENTERED DIGITAL LIBRARIES
Branko Zebec, Tvrtko M.
Šercar: THE USE OF THE INTERNET
IN SPECIAL LIBRARIES IN SLOVENIA
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Background
The First International Conference on Conceptions
of Library and Information Science, CoLIS 1, was
held at the University of Tampere, Tampere,
Finland, 26-28 August 1991, resulting in
Proceedings edited by Pertti Vakkari and Blaise
Cronin (1992). The second conference under the
same overreaching name and concept, CoLIS 2, was
held at the Royal School of Librarianship,
Copenhagen, Denmark, 13-16 October 1996. Peter
Ingwersen and Niels Ole Pors (1996) edited the
Proceedings.
This volume contains the Proceedings of the Third
International Conference on Conceptions of
Library and Information Science, CoLIS 3, held in
Dubrovnik, Croatia, 23-26 May 1999. While CoLIS 1
and CoLIS 2 were organized by a single
university, CoLIS 3 is a departure in that it was
cooperatively organized by four universities:
University of Zagreb,
Croatia,
University of Tampere,
Finland,
Royal School of Library and
Information Science, Copenhagen, Denmark, and
Rutgers University, New
Brunswick, New Jersey, USA.
Furthermore, it was cosponsored by the American
Society for Information Science, European Chapter
(ASIS/EC), the International Federation for
Information and Documentation (FID), and
University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.
The general aim of CoLIS
conferences is to critically explore and analyze
library and information science as a discipline
and as a field of research from historical,
theoretical, and empirical perspectives. This
aim, which bounds the CoLIS conferences together,
was established at CoLIS 1 and followed from then
on. However, the specific themes, that provide
the emphasis for exploration by papers included,
differed from conference to conference. The theme
for CoLIS 1 was "Historical, empirical and
theoretical perspectives," and for CoLIS 2
was "Integration in perspective." As is
shown in the title, the theme for CoLIS 3 was
"Digital libraries: Interdisciplinary
concepts, challenges and opportunities."
While the themes differed, the topics explored at
each conference reflected some of the basic
trends and issues that are of concern to library
and information science as a field. In this
sense, CoLIS conferences explore various
dimensions of the field by recognizing the past
and anticipating the future.
Numerous professional and
scientific conferences related to library and
information science are held throughout the
world. Among these, CoLIS conferences are unique
in a sense that they are not organized by a
professional or scientific organization, with
which the field abounds, nor by a national or
international institution with interest in
library or information science. People from
various universities with interest in the field
organize them as a cooperative international
venture in order to reflect. Looking through the
three volumes of CoLIS Proceedings, even by
allowing for discussion about the content or
emphasis of some or other individual
contribution, CoLIS conferences as a whole show
some needed light as to the concerns of the field
or discipline as a whole. Where were we as a
field? What ideas are influencing and troubling
us? What are some of the major problems we are
addressing and how? Where are we going? These
questions motivate the thinking about CoLIS
conferences.
Digital libraries:
reflections on the theme
Considering these broad
questions, digital libraries certainly fit the
bill as a major issue for the field. Thus, they
have been selected as the theme for CoLIS 3.
Digital libraries are surely a
technological invention. So was Gutenberg's book.
But as Gutenberg's invention was much, much more
than a technology, so are digital libraries. As
history goes, the evolution of digital libraries
is brief - not more than a decade or so has past
since the notion started gaining currency - so it
is grossly premature to talk about a history of
digital libraries. But even so, in this short
period of time the many effects of digital
libraries are already evident, with more on the
visible horizon. The effects and impacts beyond
the horizon are intriguing and exciting to
contemplate, but are still a matter of
intellectual speculation and educated guessing.
It seems very plausible that in a longer run,
digital libraries may have as far reaching effect
on libraries as Gutenberg. Digital libraries are
one of the conceptual ideas and physically
realized constructs that are powerfully reaching
into the future of libraries in particular and
information systems and services in general.
Thus, they are affecting conceptually and
pragmatically the field of library and
information science as a whole.
In increasing amounts records
of human knowledge are digitized or created
digital ('borne digital') to start with, which in
itself creates a number of new manifestations of
such records, such as to their linking
properties. Increasingly, 'information' and
'digital' go hand in hand. With the advent of
digital libraries, the nature, organization,
storage, distribution, availability,
accessibility, use and preservation of records of
human knowledge and information, all of them of
essential concern to library and information
science, are changing in many ways, many of them
fundamental, new and untested. Their economics
and management are changing in significant ways
as well.
But what is a digital library?
Conceptions differ. Approaches differ.
Realizations differ. A number of communities are
actively dealing with digital libraries, each
from its own perspective. We discuss here three
such communities, for they are represented in
these Proceedings.
The community that concentrates
on funded research under the rubric of digital
libraries comes mostly (but not exclusively) from
computer science. Not surprisingly, technical
issues and concepts, which are complex and
significant to start with, predominate. In
general, much of digital library research is
experimental or exploratory. As in all applied
research, projects lead to demonstrations, pilot
systems, and, hopefully, to deployment in
practice. Currently, there are few ways to
evaluate the effectiveness of results of this
research, because the ways to evaluate digital
libraries are not yet determined.
The community that concentrates
on building and deploying operational digital
libraries as institutions comes mostly from
operational libraries, or the professional branch
of library and information science. Not
surprisingly, the concentration is on practice
and realization within some or other
institutional setting and goal. As in all such
developmental projects, approaches are pragmatic,
leading to operational systems. While digital
libraries developed so far share some basic
concepts, they vary greatly in their
implementation. Well, libraries vary in
implementation as well. Again, there are few ways
to evaluate the results of these applications,
for the same basic reasons as mentioned in
relation to research; as yet, we have not
determined the ways for evaluation of digital
libraries in practice.
The community that concentrates
on contemplation of basic concepts, as well as on
research and discussion on a number of issues
related directly or indirectly to digital
libraries, comes mostly from the scientific and
academic branch of library and information
science. Not surprisingly, coverage is quite
wide, from philosophical issues to economics, to
users and use, to fit within structures, to
education, to a variety of relations, and to
exploration of applications in different fields.
Evaluation remains an issue here as well.
Digital libraries do not
'belong' and cannot 'belong' to any one field or
area of research or practice, to any one social
institution, or to any one community. Like many
modern endeavors, digital libraries present a
complex problem and issue, beyond the exclusive
realm of any one field or discipline, agency or
institution. Besides, digital libraries are too
important to be left to any one of these.
However, as is common in approaches to complex
problems, different fields may and do approach
different dimensions of digital libraries. While
the three communities deal with digital
libraries, they approach them from different
perspectives, showing a number of dimensions of
the problem or different conceptual, theoretical,
experimental, or pragmatic aspects associated
with digital libraries.
In each of these communities
and approaches a lot has been achieved in a
relatively short time. Actually, an ever-growing
number of operational digital libraries are
appearing throughout the world. The products of
research resulted in a growing body of knowledge
about digital libraries, not to mention a growing
body of literature. An ever-larger number of
people and institutions are joining the digital
library fray. But a lot remains to be resolved
and solved as well. A number of basic and applied
concepts need to be clarified better than they
are at present. New approaches need to be
developed and tested. Evaluation needs to be
tackled. In addition, the three communities are
evidently not in the best of communication and
cooperation. In particular, research and practice
have not achieved a fruitful interaction, as is
common in mature fields and areas. Digital
libraries are still at the beginning stage of
their evolution. This presents huge challenges
and marvelous opportunities to proceed.
Organization
The Proceedings include a
selection of papers from the three communities as
described above; however, no distinction in the
organization was made as to authors' community.
The organization of the papers in the Proceedings
follows the sequence of their presentation at the
conference. In turn, the presentations were
organized by grouping the papers into sections,
each of which represents a larger significant
issue, problem, or work area in digital
libraries. The exceptions are papers, presented
in the last section, Short Papers; at the
conference these were poster presentation and in
the Proceedings they are organized alphabetically
by the first author.
The first section, named
Context, contains papers that address the 'big
picture.' Michael Buckland as invited speaker,
examines the nature and role of vocabulary in
library and information systems, treating
vocabulary as a central component in digital
libraries. He suggests that problems inherent in
vocabulary help explain the nature and history of
conceptions of library and information science.
Bryce Allen deals with the changing nature of
design of information systems, suggesting that
shift toward user-centered design in digital
libraries can produce more flexible systems and
services, more adaptable to user characteristics.
Christine Borgman explores reasons for the
developments in digital libraries, and the
influence of key players, and speculates on
future directions. She finds that the term
"digital library" is used in two
distinct senses, pretty much reflecting the
communities as discussed above. The three papers
in this section can set the stage for much of
discussion of key directions and issues in
digital libraries.
In the second section,
Relations, the discussion of the 'big picture' is
continuing, but with more specific themes:
ethics, education, and humanities scholarship. In
an invited paper, Raphael Capurro addresses the
ethical aspects of digital libraries, the main
question being how cyberspace in general and
digital libraries in particular should fit into
the life world of people. Access and preservation
are seen as two main ethical challenges for
digital libraries. Amanda Spink & Colleen
Cool provide a survey of educational efforts in
digital libraries, finding that, as yet, there
weren't many. They suggest a list of curriculum
areas and associated topics for digital library
education. Paul Sturges & Jessica Sambrook
explore pragmatic issues facing research
libraries serving humanities scholars, showing
how in practice the changing attitudes of
scholars toward digital resources affect library
strategy towards access to resources distributed
across networks and institutions. The three
papers in this section can set the stage for
discussion of access, education, and strategy,
issues that are more related than it seems on the
surface.
The papers in the third
section, Evaluation, tackle this critical issue
from different perspectives. Louise Su &
Hsin-liang Chen approach evaluation of digital
library retrieval tools from the perspective of
evaluation of web search engines. They provide
data from a pilot study of four search engines on
the web, suggesting an evaluation model that
incorporates a number of measures useful for
evaluation of digital library searching. Wanda
Dole & Jitka Hurych, after surveying
conventional standards for evaluation of
libraries, also survey several classes of
standards that have been suggested for evaluation
of digital libraries, raising questions about
appropriateness of suggested standards as well.
Jane Reid looks at evaluation of information
retrieval systems from the viewpoint of the task
that the users are addressing, suggesting a
task-oriented paradigm for evaluation and
information value as criterion, incorporating the
broader social environment.. The three papers
illuminate very different approaches to
evaluation, showing the complexity of evaluation
issues and the diversity of possible approaches.
The two papers in the section
Management show a sample of issues, problems, and
difficulties in approaching the management of
digital libraries. Christine Dugdale, provides a
list of challenges and opportunities for library
managers in managing electronic resources. She
also provides practical experiences from a
digital (in this case called 'electronic')
libraries program, integrated with print library
services, for teaching and learning practices.
Robert Hayes presents a descriptive analysis of
the economics of digital libraries, discussing
their economic properties, and providing
microeconomic data for a variety of publications,
print and digital. He points out at difficulties
of economic analyses stemming from problems with
definition and collection of accurate economic
data. In general, after all is said and done,
management and economics will make or break
digital libraries.
Section 5, Design, provides two
papers as examples, one general the other
specific, in approaching the design of digital
library services. Diane Sonnenwald et al. Suggest
a design for collaborative services, as an
extension of other services provided by digital
libraries. Through provision of various tools
people can collectively engage in research
sharing resources. It is a vision of
collaboration built into digital libraries.
Philip Doty & Sandra Erdelez, show the
context and design of a specific digital library
for legal case documents, which emerged from
empirical studies of potential users. The design
integrates existing work practices with the
digital library. In a broader sense, the papers
illustrated the richness of possible design
approaches to digital libraries.
The papers in section 6,
Representation, deal with that perennial issue of
all libraries, digital libraries included. Bryn
Lewis describes an experimental system for
classification of documents in electronic forms.
The approach involves machine learning,
information retrieval, and evaluation of results.
Zheng Wang, Linda Hill & Terrence Smith
describe a design and implementation of a
metadata creator for a digital library, based on
Extensible Markup Language. Metadata, data about
data, is descriptive information (similar to
descriptive cataloging) about electronic
documents adapted to specific collections. The
two very different approaches illustrate as a
sample the many approaches possible and being
tried to represent documents in digital
collections.
Section 7, Interaction,
addresses information seeking and interacting
issues that are present not only in digital
libraries, but more broadly in digital and
networked environments. Preben Hansen
concentrates on the types of tasks that are
related to information seeking and retrieving
processes. The concept of tasks is suggested as
fundamental to design of interactions in
information retrieval systems. Nils Pharo
presents a model for classification of web
navigation and search strategies. The approach is
based on users' information seeking strategies.
The three papers in section 8,
Information Retrieval, follow closely the topics
addressed in the previous section, but they more
specifically address retrieval and evaluation.
Two are distinguished by the fact that they
incorporate large-scale experiments, and the
third one provides examples. Ian Ruthven &
Mounia Lalmas present a relevance feedback
technique based on usage of terms within
documents. Experimental results are provided,
using a large collection of documents and
queries. Kai Korpimies & Esko Ukkonen
demonstrate in an experiment that FAQ (Frequently
Asked Questions) articles can be identified among
a set of documents returned by a search engine
based on analysis of term occurrence frequencies.
Per Ahlgren has developed a set of formulations
for search strategies that involve a cognitive
approach to online searching, allowing for
stepwise retrieval of documents in respect to
decreasing order of relevance. Papers in sections
7 and 8 describe a set of issues and approaches
involved in the end-processes of interaction and
retrieval of digital collections. Inevitably,
interaction and retrieval are part of concerns
with digital libraries.
Section 9, Digital Libraries
and Mass Media extends the reach of digital
libraries to communication and mass media. Denis
McQuale, in an invited presentation, discusses
the future of communication from a social science
perspective. Many implications for changing
nature of communication stem from digital
resources and networks, where digital libraries
play an important role. Sussanne Ørnager
investigated a large number of newspaper photo or
image archives. From her findings she formulated
the characteristics for quality communication and
use of such archives, and for changing them into
services for users. Jerome Aumente takes a broad
view in connecting journalism, mass media and
digital libraries. The print and mass media play
an increasing role in delivery of online news and
are re-engineering themselves as information
companies, rather than just news media. New work
alliances between library and news professionals
are suggested to exploit a full potential of
digital collections and libraries. The papers in
this section show the potential for extension of
digital library investigations and applications
to a number of other areas.
The final section, Short
Papers: Digital Library Conceptions &
Applications, contains 13 papers, most of them
describing specific approaches and examples in
given institutions. The topics cover: the use of
digital libraries in distance learning; examples
of various digital library projects or
experiments in Croatia, Greece, Denmark, Poland,
Australia, and Slovenia; empirical results from
Internet search engines; and design criteria for
user-centered digital libraries. The papers
provide an example and a glimpse of the wide
breath of digital library projects in many
countries around the globe.
A final note: Clearly, the
papers in differently named sections do not cover
the whole range of topics possible under the
common section name. However, the sections, as
named and treated in content by papers, represent
a gamut of critical areas of research, practice,
and conceptualization in digital libraries. The
papers in each section should be considered
examples of works and problems addressed in that
area, and opportunities for more advances. In
each of these areas we will definitely see much
more work in the future.
Acknowledgements
Organizing CoLIS 3, as
organizing any international conference, was a
complex undertaking depending on hard work and
cooperation of great many people and good will of
many institutions. The Program Committee wishes
to thank them all. But in particular we wish to
acknowledge the contribution from colleagues and
institutions from Croatia: University of Zagreb,
National and University Library, Zagreb,
Interuniversity Centre, Dubrovnik, and Ministry
of Science and Technology, Republic of Croatia.
Let me end the Preface to these
Proceedings on a personal note. In the Spring of
1999 I worked as a Fulbright scholar at the
National and University Library, Zagreb, Croatia,
and at the University of Zagreb. I wish to thank
my colleagues at the Library and University for
assistance in organizing the Program for CoLIS 3
and in helping me generously to do the job. They
made the job not only possible, but also
pleasurable.
References
Vakkari, P. &
Cronin, B. (1992). Conceptions of
Library and Information Science. Historical,
empirical and theoretical perspectives. London:
Taylor Graham.
Ingwersen, P. &
Pors, N. O. (1996). Proceedings of the.
Second International Conference on Conception of
Library and Information Science. Information
science: Integration in perspective. Copenhagen:
The Royal School of Librarianship.
Tefko Saracevic, Ph.D.
Program Chair, CoLIS 3
School of Communication, Information and Library
Studies
Rutgers University
4 Huntington Street
New Brunswick, NJ 08903 USA
tefko@scils.rutgers.edu
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